ROS robot education Some foreign high schools have opened related courses:
Happy National Robot Week! This year has been a very special NRW as iRobot thought it would be appropriate to announce a brand new robot that promises to keep your floors 0% clean. Very happy, because this is not a mop or a vacuum, but a new updated version of iRobot Create: Create 3.
Not only is Create 3 based on the more modern Roomba platform, but it's also compatible with ROS 2, an unexpectedly mature piece of software that is now being used by a surprising number of robots to do cool things. If the mainstream vote of confidence in ROS 2 from a company like iRobot surprises you, then maybe the Create 3 should be the next robot in your life.
Recall that when iRobot last released an update to the Create DIY/educational robotics platform, the calendar showed 2014 (!), which is a little scary. The Create 2 is based on the Roomba 600 series, which (for the record) somehow remains the workhorse of my house after changing the battery. But Roombas has gotten smarter over the past (not very long, but close) decade. The Roomba i3-based Create 3 takes advantage of this.
The Create 3 is equipped with Wi-Fi, USB Ethernet host and Bluetooth. The Create 3 is also equipped with a suite of smart technologies including an inertial measurement unit (IMU), optical floor tracking sensors, wheel encoders and infrared sensors for autonomous positioning, navigation and telepresence applications. Additionally, the robot includes cliff, bump and slip detection, as well as LED lights and speakers.
What's more, Create 3 brings a variety of new features to users, including compatibility with ROS 2, an industry-standard software for robotics experts around the world. Robots require many different components, such as actuators, sensors, and control systems; many of them must communicate with each other to make the machine work. ROS 2 enables this communication and even allows hobbyists like students to speed up their project development by focusing more on their core application rather than the platform itself. Learning ROS 2 also provides students with valuable experience that many companies are looking for when recruiting robotics developers.
But wait! there are more! Create 3 also supports Python and Ignition Gazebo and is available for immediate purchase for $299 and CAD 399, with worldwide availability in the coming months.
One of the great advantages of using the Roomba i3 as the starting point for Create 3 is that it leverages all the hardware intelligence iRobot has accumulated over hundreds of years of building different styles of Roomba. Roombas are very solid and reliable. I've had two Roombas that fell off the stairs themselves (let's not say whose fault it was) and they came out completely unscathed. You can expect the Create 3 to take almost anything you can throw at it -- or more importantly, almost anything you can throw at it in an educational setting.
As for the kind of clever features the Create 3 can have, well, iRobot has helped put together an "iRobot Create 3 Hookup Guide" that left me utterly confused just a second after I read it. But it turns out that it covers the various ways to insert the dongle into the Create 3's cargo bay, as follows:
Now, we can't talk about Create 3 without mentioning the upcoming TurtleBot 4. We won't talk too much about TB4 right now, as we've discussed it with a few others, and we'll have a lot more to say about it soon. But there is no doubt that Create 3 will be an integral part of TB4, just as the Kobuki base was an integral part of TurtleBot 2.
For more details on Create 3, we interviewed Charlotte Redman, iRobot's Product Manager, and Steven Shamlian, Principal Electrical Engineer.
IEEE Spectrum: Why is Create important to iRobot?
Charlotte Redman: Part of iRobot's DNA is STEM education. Offering others the opportunity to enter the robotics industry is where Create Robots came from. The original Create helped enable TurtleBot 1, which drove ROS adoption. So, in Create 3, we're building out the history of being able to access the ROS community.
Steven Shamlian: I think it really comes down to iRobot being a group of people who believe that everyone can be a builder. That's where Create 1 and Create 2 come in, and Create 3 is the next big step forward: you go from this basic serial interface to something with Ethernet, USB, Wi-Fi, ROS, and other stuff. Hope to support as soon as possible. This will make it easier for people to create cool stuff in their lab or living room. That's what we're excited about and why we're doing it.
iRobot has a lot of new robots with some really cool new sensors and map features etc, but none of them seem to make it to the Create platform. why not?
Shamlian: So, you ask, why did iRobot base the Create 3 on the i3 instead of the s9 or j7? I think there are two reasons. The first reason is cost. The accessibility of bots is important; it is important for people to be able to afford the platform so they can build their projects on it. It's important for them to be able to iterate as interest grows. So we opted for a robot with a set of sensors that we thought could deliver what people needed most, and found the most interesting thing about the Create 2 to be its rock-solid odometer. The new Create has a downward sensor for optical flow.
Why don't we use robots with cameras? We could have, we discussed it, but the truth is that compared to what we see roboticists use in their research projects, if we give them what they get from a robot, they will be very disappointed that they are what we are doing camera used. This is my suspicion. So we thought, okay, we could pack a camera and charge more for this robot, but people might be more comfortable buying the camera or depth sensor they want to use than we're burdening them with something they don't necessarily want want.
When you think about who will use Create 3, is your imaginary end user different from what you expected with previous generations of the platform?
Shamlian: We're definitely targeting Create 3 at a higher age group than Root. I think our hope is that the robot will be available to both high school students and postdocs.
Redman: Originally, in the early Create, iRobot didn't have Root as a platform. Now we have Root, which really covers the basics of block-level coding and computational thinking for kids from K to 12. You can start with Orientation, you can go through Root all the way to Python; now Create 3 is the next step. You can program it in ROS 2 using the Python SDK or even using the iRobot coding application.
What kind of autonomy will Create 3 have?
Shamlian: Create 2 doesn't really get bot behavior. With Create 3, we wanted to be able to provide ROS operations for some behaviors that we thought would be a good way to close the robot loop. We also want to do this for those behaviors that use our sensors in a way that might be difficult for some to do. Like wall tracking, navigating through difficult spaces, especially docking, gets the robot back to where it can charge. We can solve this problem. That's what this platform is really about: With Create 3, we're able to free people from questions like "How do I make a mobile base that navigates and charges?" Instead, help them solve more interesting problems that appeal to them.
So what is the relationship between iRobot and ROS now?
Shamlian: I don't know what I can say we use internally, but I can tell you that getting ROS 2 to run on Create 3 is not a huge leap. I think iRobot believes that ROS 2 will become more successful and provide a common language for researchers and community members. It will only help iRobot if more people use ROS 2.
iRobot has a very solid Root education program, now Create 3. For people learning to code on these platforms, what do you think is the next step?
Redman: Join iRobot!